Well that makes 10! As you know, last night Barack Obama added Wisconsin and Hawaii to a historic primary winning streak. The Illinois senator's Wisconsin victory gives him 1,303 delegates compared to Clinton's 1,233. Funny, as in ironic, he seemed to not so subtly give a lot of credit to his opponent’s chief strategist.

According to The Washington Post: “While not [Hillary's] campaign manager in name, [Mark] Penn controls the main elements of her campaign, most important her attempt to define herself to an electorate. Armed with voluminous data that he collects through his private polling firm, Penn has become involved in virtually every move Clinton makes, with the result that the campaign reflects the chief strategist as much as the candidate. If Clinton seems cautious, it may be because Penn has made caution a science, repeatedly testing issues to determine which ones are safe and widely agreed upon. If Clinton sounds middle-of-the-road, it may be because Penn is a longtime pollster for the centrist Democratic Leadership Council. If Clinton resembles a Washington insider with close ties to the party's biggest donors, it may be because her lead strategist is a wealthy chief executive who heads a giant public relations firm [Burson-Marsteller], where he personally hones Microsoft's image in Washington. And if some opponents see Clinton as arrogant, her campaign a coronation rather than a grass-roots movement, it may be because of the numbers wizard guiding her campaign and the PowerPoint presentations he likes to give on the inevitability of his candidate.”

Remember Baghdad Bob? Last seen on April 8, 2003, Bob (aka Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf) had just issued his latest (and what turned out to be his last) statement about the invasion of Iraq. He said that Americans "are going to surrender or be burned in their tanks. They will surrender. It is they who will surrender."

Bob did not re-appear for the daily press briefing the following day and it was assumed that he had hightailed it out of there on the fast track to obscurity. Not so. Bob has been a very busy boy since then. He's been working as a PR consultant for a lot of high profile accounts, including the White House.

We've been hearing his words on a daily basis for more than four years. White House press secretaries have been relaying Bob's voice verbatim to the press. He feeds them their lines via special implants, an advanced version of the early prototype we saw sticking up under George W. Bush's suit coat during the 2004 debates.

Think about it. Before he joined the White House, would Tony Snow would ever have said something such as this:

"In response of the news of the day, the President was briefed before and after -- before, during and after the bike ride on ongoing developments in London, and continues to be briefed during the day, regardless of where he may be." (June 30, 2007.)

Would Dana Perino have ever come up with something as idiotic as the following all by herself:

"The President realizes that today is the fourth anniversary of the day he gave a speech on the USS Abraham Lincoln. As I said last Thursday in the briefing, that speech has been widely misconstrued, and I encourage people to go back and read it. The President did say we had a long and difficult road ahead of us. We're moving from a dictatorship to democracy." (May 1, 2007)

The White House is not Bob's only client, however. He's been consulting for such PR-challenged outfits as Jet Blue, Whole Foods Market, and most recently, Robert Murray, CEO and President of Murray Energy. Plus, he's been busy editing Wikipedia entries for the likes of Raytheon, Diebold, Dow Chemical, and Union Carbide.

I tracked Bob down recently and he looks really good. He's shaved off his moustache and traded in his Iraqi military uniform for an Armani suit. He refused to be photographed, but he did agree to share some of his favorite strategies and tactics. "I didn't invent them," he said with his signature smile, "But they come in handy when you're fronting for a dictator, covering-up malfeasance, or spinning a story."

1. Denial is your friend. Americans are unbelievably gullible and they distrust the media. Denial buys you time to come up with a better idea – or implement your exit strategy and get the hell out of Dodge.

2. Misdirection is an art. Disagree with scientists and other so-called experts. What the hell do they know? Say it was an accident, a weather balloon, an earthquake, or swamp gas.

Current Lawsuit Clock

On Thursday, March 8, 2007 at 7:41 AM, Ronn Torossian, President and CEO of 5WPR, emphatically promised that he was going to sue us. No real reason, he was just irritated by our teasing him about getting in bed with pornographer Joe Francis. Anyway, Ronn gave his obscenity-laced word that we'd see the complaint in 72 hours. It's now late by

Kathleen Durazo about A Measly $2.8 Million Goes Missing, Lawsuit ResultsFri, Jul 31, 10:58:34 AMRay Durazo (the founder) sold the company to Dan in 1999. He was not involved in any of this. He (and I) found out about the lawsuit in the LA Times. In addition to embezzling this m [...]